


The Domestic Lives of Detectives

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Cooking, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Mush, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-13 11:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4520589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Random scenes from life in the home of Phryne Fisher and Jack Robinson. Utterly pointless post-Series 3 fluffiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Man of Many Talents

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a story so much as a repository for all of the silly fluffy domestic scenes that [rivendellrose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose) keeps asking me for and that I don't know what else to do with. ♥

Jack woke briefly when he felt Phryne leave the bed, then relaxed at the touch of her lips on his forehead, and subsided back into a mostly unconscious state with his cheek pressed into her pillow.

Last night, a lovely warm Saturday that he had worked very hard to keep open, had been a whirlwind, the first time in ages that he had let himself have a night on the town and the first time he had felt comfortable being seen in public with Phryne – not on a case, but on an actual date. They had gone to dinner, and then been dancing in several clubs, all of which Phryne had chosen (thankfully bowing to Jack's one concession that they all be _legal_ clubs), drinking far too much and no doubt been very indiscreet in their showing of affection (he only hoped neither of them had tried to ravish the other on the dance floor), finishing up with scalding coffee and onion soup at two in the morning at the back door of that French restaurant Phryne was so fond of. And even a night like that had not dampened their eagerness to have one another once they finally reached the safety of her home.

But Jack was well past the days of his wild youth, and the lovemaking had put the cap on things for him. Phryne might somehow be willing to be awake before teatime on this bright Sunday, but he was not.

He vaguely heard her messing about in the bathroom, and then the soft click of the door told him that she was heading downstairs. Otherwise, the house was completely quiet; young Jane was away at Mrs. Stanley's, Mr. Butler was off on his summer holiday, and Dot was taking a leave of absence to enjoy time with her new little boy. And as it was Sunday, and a hard-working detective inspector's lawful day off, there was no one to bother Jack or prevent him from turning over, pulling Phryne's pillow to his chest and falling back into a well-deserved sleep.

...Until he smelled the smoke, and the scent of something burning.

Sudden panic forced him wide awake, and he grabbed last night's trousers from the floor and his robe from the foot of the bed and all but jumped into them on his way downstairs. "Phryne?" he called, seeing smoke in the passage. His heart dropped to the floor, and he braced himself for a kitchen on fire. "Phryne, is everything all right?"

He raced into the kitchen and into a wall of black smoke. And into Phryne. "What the hell...?"

"Sorry, Jack!" The snap of a switch and the metallic _thunk_ of a plug being pulled from the wall socket told him the cause was electrical. "Do you think you can make it to the door?"

He felt his way round Phryne and along the wall to the kitchen door, unlatched it and pulled it open. The summer breeze caught the smoke and began drawing it out. Jack wiped his streaming eyes and turned round, to see Phryne looking very disheveled and annoyed. "What exactly were you trying to do?" he asked.

She sighed and poked at the appliance on the table, from which the smoke had issued. "Make toast."

"...Make... toast." Jack pushed a heavy lock of wavy hair off his face and stared at her.

Phryne picked up a china plate, upon which rested a stack of very crisp and blackened slices of bread, and held it out to him.

"How did you manage to burn toast using a bloody toaster? I thought those things were supposed to be easy to use."

"I thought so, too."

"Well, thank God you weren't trying to use the cooker like a mere mortal. The whole house would be aflame by now."

Phryne sat down at the kitchen table with a huff and stared at the remains of what should have been her breakfast. "I never was any good at cookery... and how I'm supposed to survive an entire _week_ without Mr. Butler, I don't know. One does get tired of restaurant cooking for every meal."

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, partly to rub the last of the sleep from his eyes but also to hide the smirk forming on his lips. It was rare that he got to see Phryne in such a state of defeated irritation, rarer still to know he could put things to rights. "Why don't I take care of breakfast while Mr. Butler's away?"

"You?" She looked up at him in surprise. "You can cook?"

"I am a man of many talents, Miss Fisher. Put the kettle on, and I'll find some more bread."


	2. On Holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and Jack, a beach in Queenscliff, a lovely warm summer night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makes reference to events in [Varying States of Muscular Undress](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4423958/chapters/10051382).

Phryne Fisher stood arm in arm with her escort on the Queenscliff shore. It was a warm December night, nearly midnight, and the beach was deserted. The last ferry had long since left the pier, and the working fishing boats would not return until high tide. The waves made tiny, intimate lapping sounds on the wet sand, encouraging sensual thoughts. 

"Seems strange to be here for something other than a murder," she commented softly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful atmosphere with loud words. 

Jack snorted. "Seems strange to be _anywhere_ with you for something other than a murder."

She shot him a look; he returned it evenly. "It's really is a lovely night," Phryne sighed, taking firmer possession of Jack's arm, and leaning her cheek on his bicep. "Full moon, stars everywhere. Very romantic. Not unlike the last time we were here."

"As I recall," Jack said, as dry as a martini, "the last time we were here, I skulked around on that pier for a good hour before you turned up, and then we hid behind a pile of crates while we watched a crew of bootleggers unload their illegal rum, and _then_ , to keep from being seen by those bootleggers, we dropped over the side of the pier and into the water. I know you have a unique way of looking at the world, Phryne, but none of that strikes me as particularly 'romantic.'"

"Well... no... but what about afterward?"

"What, where we walked back to the McNasters' house soaking wet at I don't know what ungodly hour before dawn, and we had to help peel each other out of our clothes, and I was praying that no one would wake up and find me naked in your private parlor while I waited for my shirt to dry?"

"You had a blanket on! Besides, you were only naked because you wouldn't wear my dressing gown."

"If I had, then _you_ would have been naked. And very probably without the blanket."

Phryne grinned like a shark. "And would that have been so bad? It's not as though you had never seen a woman sans attire before. And I'd promised to behave. "

"Yes," Jack rumbled, pulling her close, "but I hadn't." He caressed her jaw with the palm of his hand. "That was one of the most maddening nights of my life, with you so near, so ready for me, and me not ready to take that step. God," he murmured, tilting her head gently back so that he could explore the strong curve of her throat with his lips, "how I _wanted_ you, that night. My mouth watered for you."

His little kisses and nips made Phryne hum and sigh in delight. With his arm secure around her, Phryne closed her eyes and leaned further back to give him more room. The motion, artlessly deliberate, all but thrust her groin against his, and his thin flannel summer trousers offered hardly any barrier between them. "And this night?"

His dark chuckle echoed in her blood. "That night, this night, every night. As you know damned well, Miss Fisher. But _particularly_ that night, after watching you emerge from the sea with your hair looking painted onto your face and every stitch of clothing clinging to you like a second skin. I never thought I could be jealous of a lady's blouse, but I was that night." Suiting actions to words, Jack slipped his hands under Phryne's thin blouse to press his hands to either side of her spine. "For a few seconds that night, I forgot all about the murders and the missing coin. I wanted to drag you back into the sea and slip you out of whatever the hell you were wearing. I wanted to touch you under the water. I wanted to pull you under that pier and push you up against a post and have you in the darkness..." He dragged his lips up the last inch or two of her neck. "...in the salt water and the moonlight."

Gasping for air, Phryne tangled her hands into his hair and kissed him almost viciously, pressing her fingers into the back of his skull. "Oh, I wish you had," she moaned when he broke away, panting heavily himself. She gulped down deep breaths of the tangy air and reached for his tie, grinning. "I wish you would."

She had a brief impression of pale blue fabric before her eyes, and then her blouse was suddenly on the sand, flung far away by an impatient hand. Jack's tie quickly joined it.


	3. Secret Recipes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne discovers the source of Jack's 'secret stash.'

Jack’s car was still parked on the side street beside the house by the time Phryne returned home from her club luncheon, and when she left her car in front and went inside, she heard his voice in the kitchen. “What on earth is Jack doing?” she asked, relinquishing her hat and coat to Mr. Butler.

“I believe he’s teaching Miss Jane to make his famous Anzac biscuits,” said Mr. Butler, in a confidential whisper.

Phryne’s eyes went wide. “No! Not _the_ biscuits?” Jack’s secret stash of biscuits were a legend at City South Police Station, and she was among the lucky few who had been able to steal one when his back was turned (well, actually, when he was out of his office entirely and undercover at a radio station across town, which was certainly not the most skillful use of her talents, but then, it was Hugh who’d found the hidden tin in the first place).

Mr. Butler smiled. “The very ones, Miss.” 

“And have you been able to... acquire the recipe for yourself?”

“I know you’ve been wanting me to keep an ear out, Miss Fisher, but the Inspector’s very politely asked me not to eavesdrop on him while he’s working.”

“Oh. Well, obviously, you can’t go back on a promise like that.” Phryne’s solemnity dissolved into a wide grin. “I, on the other hand...” She signaled for Mr. Butler to be as quiet as possible and tip-toed through the dining room and into the corridor, stopping just outside the kitchen door.

“I’ve done sifting the flour,” said Jane. “Now what?”

“Right,” Jack said, “now tip in the sugar, the oats and the coconut. Mix it all up good, and then make a well in the middle. Once I’ve got the butter and the syrup mixed together, then the fun starts.”

Phryne bit her lip to keep from giggling and inched closer to the door. She could _just_ see around the door frame. Jack, his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, was wearing a striped navy-blue apron and standing at the stove, stirring a saucepan. Jane was at the table, hands-deep in a crockery bowl.

“Where’d you learn to bake, Inspector?”

“From my mum, when I was a kid. She said if I was going to keep eating her out of house and home, the least I could do was help with the cooking.” 

_Another mystery solved,_ Phryne thought smugly. _Hugh Collins owes me a shilling for that._ Senior Constable Collins, as ignorant as Phryne herself about the kitchen sciences, had insisted the excellent biscuits, which Jack only ever shared willingly with frightened and recalcitrant juvenile witnesses, must have been made by the inspector’s mother or sister or landlady. But Phryne knew for a fact that Jack’s mother had passed on, that he was only recently back on speaking terms with his sister, and that he had neither landlady nor housekeeper. And he had already proven himself to be a wizard when it came to fixing her breakfast. Logic, therefore, dictated that Jack himself had been the mysterious biscuit-maker all along.

“And you don’t have to keep calling me ‘Inspector,’ Janey. I’m off-duty for the whole weekend” He glanced over his shoulder to grin at her; Phryne whirled back and flattened herself against the wall, safely out of sight.

“Then what should I call you?” Jane asked shyly.

“Hmm,” said Jack, taking her question very seriously, as he did all of Jane’s concerns. “That is a conundrum.” Phryne heard a slight scraping sound. “Make a space, and get that kettle off the stove. Right, now just a little water, and a bit of sodium bicarb... Now, pour this into the butter and honey, _carefully_.”

There was a bit of a fizzing sound, and Jane yelping and laughing in surprise. And then Jack’s warm chuckle. “That's why I said ‘carefully’. Get yourself a wooden spoon. Now, we pour all this muck into the dry ingredients, and you stir your heart out. Why not just call me Jack? Everyone else does.”

“…Because you’re a grown-up. It wouldn’t be polite.”

“Hmm. Well, what do you think you should call me?”

“Well... ‘Mr. Robinson’ sounds awfully formal. And ‘Mr. Jack’ just sounds awful.”

Phryne practically heard the grimace Jack made. “I agree.”

“Especially for someone who’s… um… friends with my guardian,” Jane added, a little hesitantly. She was close to sixteen now, studious and thoughtful but still possessing the solid core of ‘not nice’ that had first drawn her and Phryne together, and whatever ideas she might have once harbored about Miss Phryne’s various men friends had long since come into clearer focus. She was no innocent child to be shocked by her guardian’s committed but unmarried relationship, but she was possessed of enough natural delicacy to not want to call attention to it.

“Very sound logic,” Jack agreed. “Right, I’ve got the baking sheets all sorted. How’s the dough? Still sticky?”

“No, it’s nice and dry.”

“Then let’s get these dropped and into the cooker.” They busied themselves spooning the dough onto the sheets. “Just pat them down lightly with your fingertips... just like that. Well, since Inspector’s too official and all forms of Mister are out of the question, why don’t you just call me ‘Uncle Jack’?”

Phryne covered her mouth with both of her hands and nearly melted into the wall. She was not a woman much given to sentimentality, but oh, it was too adorable. She caught a glimpse of Mr. Butler tiptoeing through the dining room with something in his hand, holding a finger to his lips.

“…Really?” Jane’s voice sounded almost painfully hopeful. “You wouldn’t mind?”

Holding her breath, Phryne peeped round the door again, just in time to see Jack straighten up, wipe his hands on his apron, and take her ward by the shoulders. “Janey,” he said huskily, “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

Jane smiled brightly and hugged him. Jack hugged back so tightly that he lifted the girl off her feet, at the precise moment that Mr. Butler’s trusty little Kodak went off.

There was a lot of abashed shouting and laughter in the Wardlow kitchen after that, and both Jack and Jane demanded secrecy from both Phryne and Mr. Butler on pain of mysterious and arcane punishments (“I will tell everyone at the station about the jar in my desk.” “Don’t you _dare_!”), but no one was really angry. 

Least of all Jack, who kept a copy of the photograph in the same file with his much-loved mugshot of Phryne.


	4. A Woman's Prerogative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne has house guests. Jack is ambivalent.

Even before the station door opened, Jack knew instinctively who was headed for his office. Before he heard the swift, jaunty click of heels or smelled the wafting scents of jasmine soap and Le Fruit Defendu that he was so very acquainted with, he had already begun tidying his desk and assuming a bland, wary expression with which to meet... "Miss Fisher."

"Jack." She strolled into his office and dropped into his spare chair, and calmly appropriated a slice of his toast.

"And a good morning to you," he added, barely raising an eyebrow.

Phryne chewed and swallowed, and looked at him critically. "You haven't come to visit me in days," she said, in a very accusatory tone.

"I was under the impression that you had guests," Jack said. "Celebrity guests." His voice grew even blander. "Intimate guests."

"Oh, rot. It's an acquaintance from America and her husband, here for the sake of his health and their finances." She leaned forward and snatched his cup of tea off the saucer before he could whisk it away. "We've haven’t even seen each other since the War. Hardly any sort of intimate friendship."

"That was not the manner of intimacy I was referring to." Jack got up and closed his door; he had to walk past Phryne to do so, and calmly re-appropriated his tea cup on his way past.

"Do you have evidence for your accusations?" retorted Phryne lightly. "Or is this just a groundless assumption?" Her smile was broad and her eyes guarded. "You know from personal experience that I don't make serious attempts upon the persons of married men."

"Not without their wives' permission."

"Well, of course."

"Or their wives' involvement?" Jack raised his eyebrows rather pointedly, and had the rare and distinct pleasure of seeing Phryne Fisher blush. "You were apparently somewhat… _loud…_ while Collins was at the house, a few afternoons ago."

"Oh," said Phryne, in a very small voice.

"I must say, I didn't think your pleasures were quite _that_ varied."

"They aren't. Usually. But... a woman has the right to make the occasional exception. And my friend Lillian is... singularly attractive." Phryne grinned slowly as she spoke, as though something about that statement amused her. "I think even you would find her hard to resist."

"Considering how much practice I had resisting your charms, I can't imagine any other woman making any impression on me." His narrow lips thinned further. "Pity you can't say the same for me, when it comes to men."

"That's not fair, Jack," Phryne retorted, getting to her feet. "Who I take to my bed has nothing to do with my feelings for you. You _know_ that. You knew when we began that this would happen, and you accepted it."

"I know, I know we have an understanding about this sort of thing." Jack paused and gulped down a mouthful of tea, hoping the act would cover the unfortunate jealousy he felt creeping into his words, "and I intend to continue honoring that understanding. But I'm not so open-minded as to want to sit down to dinner with your one-off gentleman friends _or_ lady friends. Particularly not when they're lodging with you. It's too much for me, Phryne."

There were some very heavy moments of silence, before Phryne said, quietly, "That's fair enough." She closed the distance between them and curled her fingers almost tenderly around the lapel of his suit jacket. "Would it help if I said it wouldn't happen again?"

"...That would certainly assuage my masculine pride. But I don't want you to do that on my account."

She smiled slightly. "I'm not. As I said, Lili was purely for the sake of novelty, and Sam’s health doesn't really permit him to engage in my preferred manner of... vigorous..."

"Nocturnal activities?"

"Jack." She tracked his lower lip with an elegantly-manicured forefinger. "Any time of the day or night will do."

"And any place, presumably," Jack said, smiling. "Like the floor of your boudoir. Or a public beach at midnight."

"Or a detective inspector's desk," Phryne continued, looking up at him through her lashes, "at nine in the morning?"

Jack made an appreciative noise in his throat. "Some other morning, perhaps."

She released him and fell back a few steps in disappointment. "Spoilsport."

"I have a meeting with the Chief Commissioner in an hour, and as invigorating as a little diversion might be, it would also be very distracting." Jack finished his tea and then, with some reluctance, opened the door to let Miss Fisher out. "But if you insist... I will drop by the house tonight."

Phryne's face lit up. "And will you be staying for dinner with my guests?" she asked, coyly careful. "I'm sure Mr. Elsworth would enjoy meeting a member of the Victoria police force, what with him being a writer of detective novels and all."

"A what?" Jack groaned softly. "I might have known..."

"Don't worry, Jack, I'll make sure you're well paid for your efforts." At this, Jack raised his eyebrows again and delicately indicated the constable behind the front desk. Phryne smiled innocently. "I'm sure, given some of the stories they've related to me, that Mr. and Mrs. Elsworth would be more than willing to share some of their insights into the nature of Prohibition and bootlegging in America."

Jack, as was usual when he was in Phryne Fisher's presence, decided that the safest response to that was to say nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know Phryne is canonically straight. A girl can dream...
> 
> PS: So I was really and truly intending to have the next chapter of “Lost Together” finished and posted today, but instead got sidelined by a bad case of being female (which my asshole cat did NOT help by jumping on my guts while I was napping). Mea culpa.


	5. Lazy Rainy Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's called out of work. Phryne's concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter of ["Varying States of Muscular Undress"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4423958) is proving to be a bit tricky and needs a delicate touch, so you're getting this instead.

“Morning, Miss Phryne,” said Dot, coming into Phryne’s room with her breakfast toast and tea.

Phryne barely moved her face from its comfortable mashed-into-the-pillow position. “Mmph.” She opened one eye and glared at the silver tray now sitting on her bedside table. Dot busied herself drawing back the curtains to let in the late morning light; it was gray. Phryne clamped her eye shut again. She had no inclination to get out of bed today, no intention of doing anything at all.

“Are you feeling all right, miss?” Dot asked. She knew it wasn’t like her employer to ignore her first meal of the day. “Is there anything else I can get you? An aspirin, or some peppermint tea?”

In spite of her foul mood, Phryne had to smile. “You mother very well, Dot,” she said, consenting to sit up and stretch and push the hair from her eyes. “No wonder you were such a natural when little Theo came along.” She reached for the breakfast tray, deciding she might as well eat as not. “But I'm fine. Just disinclined to face such a rainy day.”

Blushing with pride at the mention of her baby son, Dot moved to the wardrobe to lay out the dress Phryne had chosen the night before. “I thought maybe you’d caught the Inspector’s cold.”

“...Jack doesn't have a cold, Dot. Unless he’s come down with one since I left him at the pier last night. Which, now that you mention it, is entirely possible. It was a terribly damp evening.”

“He came home very late last night, miss. Let himself in the back with his own key and slept in his room. He came down at his normal time for early breakfast, but he didn’t eat very much.”

Phryne’s brow furrowed with concern. If there was one thing Phryne knew for certain about her partner, it was that he _never_ turned down food. “What time did he leave for the station?”

Dot looked almost as worried as her mistress. “He had Mr. Butler telephone the station, to say he was feeling ill and wouldn’t be in today. He left his breakfast and went back to his room.”

“Oh dear.” Phryne took a pensive bite of her toast. Normally when Jack had a cold or a sore throat, he ignored them and went to work anyway. For him to actually be absent from the police station was incredibly rare. It had only happened once in the whole time that Phryne had known him; she had dared on that occasion to pilfer his address and visit him at his home, where she had found him suffering from a terrible inflammation of his old war wound, to the point where he could barely walk without assistance. That had been a dreary damp day as well, as she recalled.

She finished her slice of toast and drank a cup of tea without tasting it, then wrapped her dressing gown haphazardly round her and went down the corridor to the room that had once been a guest room, but had, over the course of many overnight visits, become universally accepted in the family as ‘Jack’s room’.

“Come in,” said a tired voice, in answer to her knock. Phryne opened the door gingerly and found Jack stretched out flat on his stomach on his bed, just raising his head from a paperback book bearing the title ‘Tales of Tahitian Waters.’ “Good morning,” Jack said politely. “Or is it good afternoon?”

“Mid-morning, I think.” Phryne closed the door and leaned back against it, admiring the picture he made. At some point he had taken off the jacket and vest and tie that he had originally dressed in when he had intended to go to work that morning, and had discarded his shoes, so now he was sprawled across his bed in only his trousers, socks, and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. His hair was tousled and awry; Phryne had noticed months ago that Jack had a habit of carding his hand through his hair while he was reading, especially if a scene was particularly engaging. “Good book?”

“Very. Makes me almost want to reconsider that Polynesian cruise you were talking about last month.”

Phryne raised an eyebrow. “Only _almost_?” she prodded, swaying forward to sit beside him and have a turn playing with his hair.

“I shudder to think what this city would get up to without me, if I went off on a months-long trip to French Polynesia.”

“But it can do without you for a day, clearly.” She leaned over to press a kiss to the crown of his head. “Dot tells me you’re not feeling well. Did you pick up a cold, skulking about looking for smugglers on the docks last night?”

He looked up at her with an odd expression, equal parts smug and sheepish. “No, actually, apart from being rather sleepy, I feel fine.”

“Then… why…?”

“Because…” Jack trailed off, still looking rather embarrassed. Then he shrugged. “It’s disgustingly wet and cold out, and I’m tired, and thanks to this damned smuggling racket, we’ve barely seen one another in three weeks. I-I wanted to spend the day with you, but I couldn’t convince myself to call out until halfway through breakfast.”

A warm little glow began to suffuse through Phryne’s chest and limbs, entirely displacing the rainy-day lethargy. “Is that so?” she smiled. She twisted round and draped an arm around his shoulders, insinuating her legs, bare beneath her dressing gown, across his lap. “Then why, may I ask, did you choose to come in here, and not join me in bed, hmm?” She plucked playfully at his unbuttoned collar. “It’s much nicer there.”

“I know,” Jack rumbled, wrapping his hands round her waist and pulling her fully into his lap. “I tried. But you’re a bit of a bed hog. Once I leave, there’s no getting back in.” 

“Well, not unless you ask _very_ nicely…”

He kissed her unexpectedly, drawing a mewl of happy surprise from her now-occupied lips. “How was that?” he growled against the corner of her mouth.

“I think that counts as ‘very nicely.’”


	6. A Working Lunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and Jack have a bit of an office picnic while they discuss a case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still working on the next chapter of "Varying States." It's fighting me. Also I had a craving for Italian food to work through.

The smells reached Jack in his office well before the woman did, the scent of French perfume mingling inharmoniously, but deliciously, with the unmistakable odor of Italian cuisine. “You do know you don’t have stoop to bribing me with food anymore, to gain access to my investigations,” he told his visitor, as she strode blithely into his private room.

Phryne Fisher paused in the act of setting her picnic basket, covered with a red and white checked cloth, on Jack's desk. "Well, if you don't _want_ any of Mr. Butler’s lasagne for your lunch, I’m sure he won’t be too grossly offended.” She started to pull back.

Jack’s hand closed around the handle of the basket. “I didn’t say I didn’t want any. I said you didn’t have to bribe me to gain access to the case files. Did you bring forks this time?”

“I did, since you refuse to amuse me anymore by eating with your fingers.”

“The last time I did that, you almost ravished me in your coat closet.” The warm amusement in his voice spoke volumes about how he wouldn’t have minded if she had. “God only knows what you’d do to me in here.”

Phryne’s secretive little smile said that she would dearly love to show him. “I also brought plates and wine glasses,” she continued casually, drawing a bottle of Chianti from the basket.

“Phryne, I am on duty.” 

“You’re not on duty, you’re on lunch. Besides, you’ll be much too full of food to get tipsy on this stuff.”

Considering that the paperwork on his desk that morning had been so thick he hadn’t been able to even find his breakfast toast, let alone eat it, Jack had to admit she was probably right. 

Phryne produced another, smaller basket from within the larger one, full of warm thick slabs of bread with which to mop up the rich tomato sauce, and for when they were finished, a Thermos flask with the strong Italian-style coffee that Jack favored in the afternoons. 

For some time after the Carbone murder and the arrests at Strano’s Ristorante, they had both avoided Italian food, solely out of the awkward associations the cuisine raised in both of their minds, particularly in Jack’s. Then Concetta Fabrizzi had remarried after a whirlwind courtship and with her new husband held an enormous festa to celebrate the reopening of her grandfather’s restaurant, and made sure to invite both Jack and Phryne to the party. All the foods of Italy somehow regained their savour, after that night.

“It’s not my birthday, you know,” Jack pointed out, perfectly dead-pan, while his eyes laughed at her. Phryne might well enjoy bringing him lunch on days when she suspected he was too busy to stop work and eat (which was every day), but she never came to the station merely to chat. He tucked a napkin into his shirt collar and waited.

“Jack, can’t a woman just... surprise her gentleman friend with a nice lunch?”

He grinned and held out the case file on the McNulty murder. “Trade.” Phryne handed him a plate with a generous slab of lasagne. “Try not to get sauce on it,” Jack cautioned, digging in.

Phryne busied herself reading the file, while Jack ate and marveled at Mr. Butler’s skills. “Tobias Butler is a wizard of the kitchen. So, which restaurant did he burgle to get this recipe?” 

“I am sworn to secrecy.”

After he had put away about half the giant piece, he looked up and saw that Phryne hadn't even touched her plate. “Aren’t you eating?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry, Jack. I was just trying to figure out why on earth James McNulty would have nailed his windows shut from the inside.”

“His neighbors said he was scared of being robbed. Not unusual in that neighborhood.”

“True,” Phryne said, rather unsatisfied. She flipped to the front of the file and began reading again.

Jack lovingly absorbed another bite of lasagne, then loaded his fork. He reached over the desk and plucked the folder from Phryne’s hands. “The file will still be there when lunch is over,” said Jack, with the tone of mock sternness that he assumed so well. “And if you don't help me eat this, it is going to be a very bloated Detective Inspector that you welcome into bed tonight. Besides,” he added, “you’ve got that ‘lean and hungry’ look.” He held out the fork. “Open up.”

Phryne’s expression as she looked at him from under her lashes ran the gamut from ‘You are the most exasperating man’ to a wordless soliloquy on how she wanted to have him right there on the desk. She smoldered and smirked and then grinned outright, and opened her mouth for the bite of food.

She closed her lips round the fork with the most ardent of glances. Jack had a sudden, vivid, and very visceral remembrance of the last time he had seen that look. A few nights ago, when she had sat him on the end of her bed and knelt between his legs and closed her lips around… 

He coughed sharply to dispel the image. His trousers were feeling rather too tight, which for once had nothing to do with how well Mr. Butler was feeding him.

The twist of Phryne’s tempting red lips was all he needed to know she was thinking of the exact same thing. “Shall I close the door?” she murmured. 

Jack bit back a needy groan, and at the same moment, his stomach rumbled impatiently. “…Yes. But after lunch.”


	7. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne has to reassure her oldest friend when her relationship with Jack turns out to be serious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not actually sure if this will be the last chapter, but for the moment, I've run out of cute scenes without homes. So there _might_ be more in future? Maybe? Possibly? ;)

Jack paused in the doorway of the morgue. “Are you coming, Miss Fisher?”

From the dire look Mac was throwing her, Phryne suspected her answer had better be a polite negative. “Not just yet, Jack. Dr. Macmillan and I have some… things… we need to discuss.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows but, wisely, made no comment beyond, “I’ll meet you back at the car, then. Unless, of course, you decide to hare off and find yet _another_ body to complicate this case with.”

“I did not _find_ this body, Jack,” Phryne protested. “It fell into my car! And ruined a very fetching hat, too, I might add.” She held up the crushed remains of her green velvet cloche and pouted. “I doubt even Dot will be able to salvage this.”

“I’m sure your collection will bear the loss,” said Jack dryly. “I’ll wait for you in the car. In my car,” he added, grinning, and took his leave.

Mac watched him head down the walkway until he was out of earshot, and then fixed Phryne with an expression of utter disbelief. “Him, Phryne? Really? That’s the horse you’re putting your money on?”

“What’s wrong with Jack?” asked Phryne, all innocence. “I thought you liked him.”

“He’s a decent sort of man, as far as men go, I’ll give you that. And he’s damned good at his job… all thanks to you, I’m sure.” Mac picked up a clipboard and made some notes on it concerning the latest body in her care, with an air of stage-y disdain that Phryne knew well. “Just never thought you’d pick him to settle down with.”

“Or settle down at all, I’ll wager. What’s wrong, Mac? Afraid I’m losing my edge?”

“Don’t tell me you’re not surprised by that rock on your finger.” The red-haired doctor jerked her chin at Phryne’s left hand.

“It’s hardly a rock, Mac,” Phryne protested, stretching out her hand. A little smile flitted across her face. “Just a little gift from Jack for my birthday.”

“It’s not a wedding ring?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, that’s a relief. Of course, that’s not at all what the press seems to think.” She wasn’t at all taken in my Phryne’s dramatic eye-roll. “Granted, I know that where you’re concerned, the press is often wildly inaccurate, but when even your aunt thinks you’re taken...” Mac sighed. “It just doesn’t seem like you, Phryne. Getting stuck to one man for the rest of your life, and _that_ man in particular.”

Phryne hoisted herself onto a vacant slab and let her legs swing over the edge. “I’ve told you, Mac. Aunt Prudence believed those newspaper reports. And after losing Arthur... she was just so overjoyed and so determined to be nice to Jack, after she’d disapproved of him so much at first, that I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her.”

“Liar. You _revel_ in disappointing Prudence.”

“Not at all! I revel in shocking her. And me getting married at all, let alone to an apparently dull and respectable police officer, well…” Phryne’s grin was very naughty. “What could be more shocking than that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you somehow decided that making a marriage out of a misunderstanding was a good idea?”

“Mac—”

“I put a call in to a friend at Hatch-Match-and-Dispatch. She found the license the two of you filed.” Her tone was entirely flat and sardonic, belying the deep worry she felt. Mac had known Phryne for years, since their days at school together under Miss Charlesworth’s no-nonsense tutelage. And the memory of visiting her in Paris after the war, after she had broken off with Rene Dubois, haunted her. Mac knew what belonging to a man could do to a woman, especially to a woman like Phryne Fisher. “Why couldn’t you two have just had a nice commonplace Continental arrangement? Jack’s a modern man, I’m sure he could’ve gotten used to the idea.”

“A legal marriage wasn’t my first choice,” Phryne admitted, after a long moment of squirming under Mac’s no-nonsense gaze. “Or Jack’s, for that matter. He wasn’t keen to marry again at all... although I think he’s more comfortable now that the whole Victoria police force doesn’t suspect him of making frequent clandestine visits to his mistress. But it was the only solution, Mac. The situation was becoming untenable. I wanted him at the house as often as possible, but the neighbors were beginning to talk, and while you know I don’t care about that, it put Jack in a very bad position with the new Chief Commissioner and made Aunt Prudence turn into an absolute dragon with her various committees. A civil ceremony was our only option.” 

“...I see.”

Phryne’s green eyes narrowed critically. “You’re not satisfied. Come on, Mac, out with it! We’ve been through too much together for you to beat about the bush like this. What’s wrong?”

Mac set down the clipboard and faced her friend with her arms crossed over her chest, as though prepared for anything. “For all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been interested in settling down. In settling for anything. You’ve always wanted the type of man who would run to meet you half way, and now you’ve gone and pinned all your hopes on a man who made you chase after him for almost two years, a man with demonstrated problems in successfully navigating a marriage in the first place. So what happened? Did bagging him use up all your energy and now you’ve got no heart for anything else?”

“Hardly,” Phryne drawled, in a soft and suggestive tone.

“Oh Christ, spare me.”

“Jack was… is… a challenge. He wanted me from the beginning, but was too…”

“Scared?”

“No… noble.” Phryne and Mac both let out simultaneous snorts. “I know that’s a lunatic thing to say, but it is the truth. He had his desires, and his reasons for not acting on those desires, and that’s a very rare thing to find in a man, you know. I had to respect him for that. And,” she continued, slowly, a slight blush coming to her cheeks, “it is equally rare for me to respect the men who I take to my bed… let alone trust any of them as much as I do Jack.” Her red lips tilted up in a weary smile. “We understand one another, Mac. We have… the same wounds, I think. The same nightmares. We know how to soothe one another's hurts. And…” Phryne struggled for a moment or two to put words to her thoughts. At last, she had to shrug. “I love him, Mac.”

“Simple as that?”

Phryne’s smile turned impish. “I don't bother with complicated men, you know that.”

“Well, you never used to,” said Mac dryly. But at least now she was smiling as well.

“Everything all right?” asked Jack when his wife finally joined him in his car. 

Phryne looped her arm through his and kissed his cheek. “Life couldn’t be better, darling.”


End file.
